CHAPTER III.
Literature and the Drama as Contributories to Jocular Literature—Dependence on Surroundings and Circumstances.
LITERATURE and the Drama have been the most munificent contributors to our Ana. If the sayings reported of or by actors and authors were subtracted from the grand total, the residuum would assuredly display a very deplorable shrinkage; and this is easily capable of explanation in a manner which itself explains the corrupt form in which much of this lore has descended to us. For the whole atmosphere of the theatre is conducive to the suggestion of odd circumstances and situations, and the professional writer enjoys peculiar facilities, through his reading and associates, for making himself master of the good sayings of his own circle and of other times. As Bacon observed, “Reading makes a full man, and conversation a ready man”; the caterer for the stage or the booksellers finds that it enters into his business to store his brain with such bons-mots and pieces of harmless scandal as he picks up in books or in society; and these are naturally apt to undergo, before they reach other ears, a polishing operation or the action of the churn. For, as they came to him, they offended in some particular, perchance, his artistic eyes, or it seemed good to change the bill.
To this kind of agency, no doubt, is owing the large stock, which survives in print in most languages, of various readings of stories; but a second and very different influence, not less potential, has been concurrently at work in the same direction. From time immemorial the professional joke-dresser has ranged at will over the whole field, and kept the market excellently well supplied with goods of this special description in every variety at the lowest possible figure.
Malone, in his Recollections, says of Richardson the artist:
“He was a great news- and anecdote-monger, and in the latter part of his life spent much of his time in gathering and communicating intelligence concerning the King of Prussia, and other topics of the day, as Dr. Burney, who knew him very well, informs me.”
This extract furnishes in some degree the key to the origin of a large share of the amusing tales, jeux d’esprits, and repartees, which the various extant collections offer to our consideration—that is to say, to their origin in a second or third state, as the printseller expresses it; and beyond question, if there is any branch of facetious biography or history which has reached us in an artificial condition, it is par excellence that which deals with alleged episodes in the careers of high-born personages, not merely of remote times, but of an approximate generation or so—nay, even of the great folks with whom we might touch elbows, si fas esset.
If it be the case that “a jest’s prosperity lies in the ear of him that hears it,” it is equally true that a pleasantry depends for its thorough success on the atmosphere in which it receives utterance, and on the personality of the narrator. Something which might seem racy and piquant to an Oriental, would very probably fall flat in an ancient Greek and Roman gathering; and it demanded all the surrounding costume of Greece or Rome to give salience and effect to those specimens of wit, which do not often, as they are recorded, strike us as remarkably brilliant. It is as if we put old wine into new bottles. The liquor is there; but the crust and the beeswing have vanished.
So it is with the facetious heritage which comes to us from our own immediate ancestors. The substance and outline are with us; but the setting, the context, and the genius loci, are too frequently to be desired; and, besides, an editor has perhaps come upon the ground, and turned what was rough copy into a sentence or a paragraph “teres atque rotundus.” It becomes a readable article of sale; but it is a sort of handiwork, and no longer a spontaneous sally or a faithful report.
On the other hand, it may happen that a jest bears upon some permanent incidence of human society, and passes with merely verbal changes from one age, one language, and one country, to another; like the episode mentioned by Lucian in his Hetairai and likewise by Gellius, of the lady who, when her admirer sent her a cask of wine, commending its age, retorted that it was very small for its age,—where we observe that the conditions, being neither local nor temporary, are capable of universal and perpetual application.
The reduction of pleasantries and satirical thrusts to form must be an outcome of topographical, climatic and social conditions, and is necessarily dependent on habits of life, pronunciation, diet, and dress—nay, on the most trifling minutiæ connected with national usages. The happiness of a witticism or of a taunt hangs on its relationship at some sort of angle to the customs and notions prevalent in a country. It exists by no other law than its antagonism or contrast to received institutions and matters of common belief; and hence what in one part of the world is apt to awaken mirth or resentment, in another falls flatly on the ear.
The essence and property of a saying lie under very weighty obligations to local circumstances and colouring. There can be no more familiar illustration of my meaning to an English reader than the large debt which an Irish or Scottish piece of humour owes to the Irish or Scottish brogue. But it has been the same everywhere from all time. Among the ancient Greeks an Ionian would have found much difficulty in appreciating the point of an Attic sally, while among the modern Italians a Tuscan would listen with unmoved countenance to a jeu d’esprit in the Venetian patois. The turn of a syllable, the inflexion of a vowel, is enough to mar the effect; and a similar observation holds good of the numberless dialects spoken throughout the German Fatherland and the Low Countries.
It is comparatively easy to comprehend a joke, when there is a well-understood acceptation of terms and a community of atmosphere and costume; but to study these matters at a distance both of time and place, and to have to allow for altered circumstances or surroundings is immeasurably more difficult; and this is what I do not think we always remember that we have to do in estimating the good things of our own precursors on this soil, and still more those of individuals governed in all their ways of thinking and acting by considerations which we can never perfectly bring home to ourselves.
Taking the United States, again, the same expression will be treated in one part as of obnoxious significance; in another it will perhaps raise a smile; and in a third it will bear no meaning whatever.
